Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise
+ New Orleans & Portland Oregon
May 2025
First stop overnight Sydney where the club near the airport kindly put on $8 jugs of one of my favourite beers – the holiday was off to a good start!
Next morning early start to get the 9am flight to LA on United – a good trip and we arrive in LA two hours before we left – lucky early check in and overnite near the airport.
Tuesday its a flight to Miami – I must admit I wasn’t expecting much as we only went there because the cruise left from there but we were pleasantly surprised by a very cool, contemporary & arty city – lots of great murals and we spent some time in Little Havana which was really great.
Friday we board the ship for Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise – 4 nights & about 35 bands onboard. The curator of the bands on the cruise was Little Steven VanZant who is the guitar player in Bruce Springsteen’s band and also starred in the TV show Sopranos – he has a radio show that promotes 60’s style garage music. Some of the bands are up and coming but many of the bands are all or some of the original members from the 60’s – meaning a lot of cool, inspiring 60 & 70 year old rockers full of energy, swagger and amazing talent.
Here’s a 20 minute compilation of video we shot on the cruise.
Each band plays at least 3 times over the 4 nights and the ship (2000 passengers & 10 stories high) is completely devoted to the music with 7 stages of varying sizes, from a large outdoor concert stage on the top deck complete with spa tubs at the back so you can sip your cocktail in the spa while watching the bands. There is also a large auditorium and several smaller bars. All your food & booze is included. Standout shows were The Lords of Altamont, Social Distortion, The Woggles and many others.
We caught up with our Swedish friends Henning & Karriane and had quite a few drinks with them and saw a few shows together. We had an interior cabin which was good as there was no sunrise to wake us up so we usually strolled to breakfast about 10:30. The food was good but we didn’t really get time to go to the nice restaurants as we were too busy running from stage to stage so we didn’t miss anything and often just called into the 24 hour buffet between bands.
The cruise returned to Miami and we spend another night in a hotel near the airport and next day fly to New Orleans. I reckon it the best place I have ever been – so much amazing food, music everywhere and the people are super friendly. The first couple of day we just re-familarize ourselves with the city (this would be our 5th visit) and our favourite bars & restaurants. The French Quarter is quite touristy and we avoid the Bourbon Street area altogether and we mainly hangout in Frenchman Street on the border of the Treme district.
Frenchman Street has about 10 bars on each side of the street along about half a km, you can buy a drink in one and take it with you to visit other bars. The mix of music is amazing – obviously lots of jazz (both contemporary & dixieland) a smattering of country, folk, soul, funk & also plenty of blues. We score tickets for a gig by punk legends The Damned and they put on a great show.
On Sunday we go to a Second Line Parade. New Orleans has many “social clubs” which all come together at the famous Mardi Gras, but each Sunday one of the clubs has their own parade. A few highly decorative floats with all the club members is their finest regalia follow a marching band and many folks join in so there is usually a few hundred people marching (well dancing mainly) and the parade goes for a few hours with occasional stops at well know bars. There are also pickups with BBQ’s on the back & ones full of ice with beer and wine a plenty. We finish our visit with a dinner at one of Nola’s best restaurants called Cochon – our dishes include shrimp gumbo, fried alligator, jambalaya rice & boudin (a spicy Cajun pork & rice sausage)…. just superb !!!
Tuesday we fly to Portland, Oregon and meet up with our good friends Jim & Stacy who we met a few years ago on the Were Loud journeys thru Europe – they flew in from Minneapolis and we all plan to go to the Total Punk Corporate Retreat (about 200 people) .We spend the first few days bar & restaurant hopping with these guys as they have been to Portland many times and know lots of cool places. Portland has an incredible amount of small bars, breweries and restaurants. We have a nice apartment walking distance to most things in the area.
Thursday night is the pre-party for the small festival and we catch up with quite a few more friends that we have met over the years at festivals in US & Europe – so good to catch up again. Unfortunately we both come down with what I think was the RSV virus, we did covid test so know it wasn’t that. We both has super bad coughs and Jenny lost her voice pretty much completely so we unfortunately miss the next 2 night of music as we didn’t want to infect anyone.
We bounced back reasonably well after a couple of days in bed and were able to have lunch with Jim & Stacy before they left. It was along haul home – we left Portland accommodation at 10am – a 4pm flight back to LA and a 7 hour layover so we got a nice room near the airport & had a good feed and a hot bath before the 15 hour flight home. We were pretty exhausted when we got to Sydney and we stayed at a air bnb for two night just in case we picked up a bug on the plane – mainly because we didn’t want to infect anyone as our niece was getting married on the Sunday – it was a beautiful wedding and we got to see a lot of family too.
Monday midday flight back to Ballina & home to Lennox for a well deserved bath & comfy bed.
